


Fluidity of Being

by HSavinien



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluid Sexuality, Gen, Identity Issues, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 17:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1696892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HSavinien/pseuds/HSavinien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalia Romanova has no fixed sexuality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fluidity of Being

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by burritosong/emmypenny.

Natalia Romanova had never understood on any more than an intellectual level the concept of a defined sexuality. She thinks it was the Red Room, the control and isolation and inhumanity of it. She thinks it was never the Red Room. She was always thus and would have been the same raised in a loving, "ordinary" family situation. 

When she first comes to SHIELD, she thinks sexuality, all the different words and limiting concepts, is an elaborate prank being practiced upon her, that the sensitivity training lessons are a strange form of control they are trying to impose. She asks Maria. Maria turns red, which is amusing, but means she's been too frank again, too much herself, too little smooth control. Maria explains, though, that these are the words that people use to understand themselves and each other, that people's sexuality and gender expression are not usually situational to the degree Natasha expects. 

Natasha experiments. She chooses agents and performs for them, matching her stance, stride, body language to their desires, then reverses it, playing the exact opposite. She gets a brief lecture from Fury when they share an otherwise empty elevator ride about not messing with his agents' heads like that. She suggests that said agents might need a little more training in recognizing manipulation. He smirks and does not disagree. Natasha changes tactics. She switches to directness, asking people to their faces about the ways they enact sexuality. She is invited, firmly, to attend a seminar on sexual harassment and workplace boundaries. 

Natasha leaves the other agents alone and asks Clint. He, at least, will talk to her. He details his own experiences, talks about the people he'd seen in the army and in the circus, explains to the best of his abilities how and why he feels the way he does, with a gratifying degree of bluntness and no shame. Natasha appreciates it. She never feels defined by any of the words, though, except perhaps for "queer". Natasha is changeable and fluid and now, now the only one who chooses how and with whom she'll please herself.


End file.
